Live from Space! National Geographic, NASA Team Up for Cosmic TV Event

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | February 05, 2014 04:35pm ET

This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. Image taken: Feb. 10, 2010.Credit: NASA

TV-viewers around the world will be treated to an unprecedented live tour of the $100 billion International Space Station next month when the National Geographic Channel airs a two-hour special from the astronauts' orbital home.

During the "Live from Space" TV event, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata — two of the six spaceflyers currently living on the station — will show how they stay fit, conduct science experiments and even use the toilet in microgravity. They'll also talk to viewers via video chat, according to Nat Geo. Meanwhile, veteran NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who is perhaps most famous for his spacewalking repairs the Hubble Space Telescope, will be partaking in the two-hour event, live from Houston.

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The TV special, which will air in mid-March, is meant to coincide with the reboot of Carl Sagan's popular "Cosmos" miniseries, according to Nat Geo. The new iteration of the show, called "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey," is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the first episode is set to air March 9 on Fox and the National Geographic Channel.

The International Space Station is the largest manmade structure ever built in space. Five different space agencies representing 15 countries contributed to its construction and rotating crews of astronauts have continuously occupied the orbiting lab since 2000.

Megan Gannon

Megan previously worked as a writer and editor on the national desk at NewsCore. She has a Bachelor's degree in English and art history from New York University. To find out what her latest project is, you can follow Megan on Google+.